Brazil’s black coaches speak out on racism in football

Good morning and welcome back to the Brazil Sports newsletter. Today, we are looking at racism in Brazilian football, as the league’s only two black coaches faced each other this weekend. There’s also a look back at Neymar’s career, as the forward wins his 100th cap for Brazil. Finally, we explore one of Brazil’s biggest export markets: professional footballers.

Brazil’s black coaches speak out on racism in football

On Saturday evening, in Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã stadium, the head coaches of Fluminense and Bahia—Marcão and Roger Machado—wore t-shirts emblazoned with the words “Enough Prejudice” and spoke at length about the structural racism in place in Brazilian football.

Why it matters. In a largely black sport in a majority black country, Marcão and Roger Machado are the only two black managers in the league. In the second tier, there is only Botafogo-SP’s Hemerson Maria.

How racism is validated. After the match, Roger Machado gave an honest, clear diagnosis of what he sees as the “structural, institutionalized prejudice” of Brazilian football. “The biggest prejudice I have felt was not through insults. I feel there is racism when I go to a restaurant and I’m the only black person. In university, I was the only black person. This is proof to me. But even so, when we say this, people try and say: ‘There is no racism, can’t you see? You made it.’ No, I am the proof there is racism because I made it.”

Closed shop. Brazilian football coaching is an old boys’ club. Teams sack their managers on a whim, yet the coaches rarely leave the league, popping up at another Série A club the next month. However, when black coaches come along, they are rarely included in this merry-go-round, lasting much less time at the top level.

Andrade. The best example of this is Jorge Luís Andrade, who came in as a caretaker coach and led Flamengo—Brazil’s biggest club—to the league title in 2009. For most other coaches, this would have set him up for an entire career of bouncing around Brazil’s elite teams, but not for Andrade, the first black manager to win the Brazilian league since 1992.

Four months after lifting the trophy and winning the manager of the year award, Andrade was sacked. His next job came five months later, at second division side Brasiliense, who play their home games to no more than a couple of thousand fans in a town outside Brasilia. His next job came in the third division, then he dropped into non-league football. In 2017, he was in charge of Petrolina, who play in the second-tier of the Pernambuco state league, before deciding to pack it in and sell fruit at a...